Who Killed Jacob Black?
by Silence of the Wolves
Summary: Author: DoUTrustMe. They say confession is good for the soul. I'm about to find out if that's true. AU. Jacob/Billy Black. Silence of the Wolves Contest entry.


**Silence of the Wolves Contest**

**Title: **Who Killed Jacob Black?

**Author: **DoUTrustMe

**Author's homepage: **http:/www[dot]fanfiction[dot]net/~DoUTrustMe

**Main Players: **Jacob/Billy Black

**Disclaimer: **Twilight and its characters belong to the prolific and creative Stephenie Meyer.

**Summary**: They say confession is good for the soul. I'm about to find out if that's true.

To see other Contest entries, please visit the Contest's FanFiction page:  
http:/www(.)fanfiction(.)net/u/2269000/Silence_of_the_Wolves

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* * *

"Work on your jump shot, Dad," Jacob had rasped with concerted effort from his hospital bed. "It sucks." _

_He had smirked when he said it, with a glint in his weary brown eyes and Billy couldn't help but smile back in spite of the tears that wet his cheeks. It had always been a joke between them. Even the specter of death hanging over him could not take away Jacob Black's love of basketball and laughter._

_Billy Black sat on the front porch of his house and carefully retrieved memories from the past one by one, like threads woven into the tapestry that represented the last twenty four years of their lives together - Jacob as a chubby baby, Jacob shooting baskets at the old hoop he'd rigged up by the side of the house, Jacob raiding the fridge after arriving home hungry from school, Jacob laughing his raucous laugh, Jacob working on his truck in the shed at the back of the house with music blaring, Jacob getting dressed up in a suit for the school dance ... Jacob kicking a football around the yard with his friends. _

_Each recollection was delicately inspected, reviewed and treasured. Billy hoped the depiction he created in his mind would not fade away with time. He did not want to lose one precious memory of his only child._

_He lifted his face to the sun hoping the rays could somehow reach down inside him and warm his soul as they did his weathered, brown skin. In spite of the cloudless day, the world was overcast and gloomy without Jacob, like someone had dimmed the light and left him in permanent shadow. _

_Jacob had been Billy's personal sun – the source of his light and warmth, the reference point for his existence, the central body around which his life had revolved. But now his sun had set and he felt the darkness and icy nothingness creeping into him. It had been more than three months since Jacob's funeral, but the black hole where his heart had once been gaped open like a wound that wouldn't heal. _

_Billy took a deep breath and then rolled his wheelchair purposefully off the deck and down the ramp._

* * *

If I'd known how dangerous I was I would have tried to kill me myself. But the job of carrying out my ultimate demise fell to someone just as capable of committing the heinous crime as I was. I should know, because I am as well acquainted with my executioner as I am with myself. I know his most innermost thoughts and feelings as he waits outside my window with gun in hand, ready to kill me. Wait. Let me start at the beginning instead of at the end.

I am a writer. That is to say, I write as a hobby. By profession I am a computer programmer and because of my training, reason and logic have dictated action for most of my life. Sequential thought, however, does not guide every aspect of my character. In my heart and soul, I am more intuitive – a designer of random creations that have no origins in the left brain. I write music and poetry. I write stories; I create worlds with characters and plots. You've never heard of me. My first novel lies unpublished - an organized collection of binary digits stored in the electro-magnetic graveyard on the hard drive of my laptop. Every day I fight to not write, to not do what I love, to not exhume and finish the book that turned me into what I am – a cold-blooded killer.

I am a murderer. I didn't commit the kind of temporarily insane slaying of a stranger that happens in a blinding moment of rage. No, I carried out the reprehensible and pre-meditated murder of a man that I knew and loved. I freely admit to the crime of which I was not capable, but which I nevertheless executed with malice of forethought. I killed an incredibly handsome and innocent twenty four year old actor whom I loved like my own. Three months ago he died a slow, painful death while I watched with tearful eyes, never lifting a finger to intervene or stop his death, even though I had the power to do so – the power of deity.

I am a God. I didn't plan to be a God; in fact, I fell into it unwittingly. The idea of having the power and responsibility of Godhood terrifies me. But in creating my own world complete with people, places and events, I became a God. It was in the act of murdering the young man that I finally realized what was happening, finally clued in to the enormity of the god-like responsibility I had created for myself. In his death, I realized what I had done to the characters that I loved, the ramifications and nuances of the way it would affect those people for life. I realized what it was to be a God – to set in motion a myriad of possibilities and be responsible for each outcome. I am a reluctant, inept and foolish God, but a God nonetheless. I am not omnipotent; I am weak and powerless and yet I was able to give myself power that I did not have. Impossible, you say? Can a powerless individual give herself the very power to turn herself into a God?

In the computer world, there is a term called bootstrapping, booting for short. The term comes from the fact that boots have a loop at the top back known as a bootstrap, which allows the wearer to insert a finger in the loop and gain the leverage need to pull on the boots. To pull oneself up by the bootstraps is an impossible task in reality and yet in the computer world, it is not only possible, bootstrapping exists on every computer. Every computer pulls itself up by the bootstraps and starts itself – a seemingly infeasible act, yet that is how it is done.

How did I lift myself up to a power that I did not have? How did I bootstrap myself? What power that I did not have did I give to myself? The power of words. 'The pen is mightier than the sword,' wrote Edward Bulwer-Lytton. Words affect emotions; the power of words can help, inspire, encourage, and motivate us. Politicians use words to sway us; salesmen use words to persuade us, and actors us words to convince us. Words inflame masses to war and lovers to passion. In an age of self-help and self affirmation, an age of motivational speakers and electronic communication, words are a powerful drug. I gave myself the power of words and created characters that came to life. And my words killed Jacob Black.

Jacob Black was born to Billy and Ariella Black in the state of Michigan. Billy was an athlete and a strong and caring father. Jacob's mother was a nurse; she had worked in the oncology ward for many years, but retired to stay home with her only child, Jacob, after he was born. Jacob, like his father before him, was also a born athlete. As an eighteen year old boy, he earned a basketball scholarship to Michigan State University. His life revolved around sports, especially basketball. During his last year of high school, Jacob developed bone marrow cancer and became very ill forcing him to forfeit his promising basketball career.

He received the best possible care and he went into remission months later after many painful treatments. Instead of being bitter about his experience, he chose to help those who were going through what he had gone through. He volunteered regularly at the hospital and spent hours talking with and entertaining the young patients in the cancer ward. He went to university and studied acting. After graduation, he moved to Los Angeles and made several movies. His career was just starting to take off. While filming one of his movies he met a girl – a girl named Bella Swan who loved him and all that was good and decent about him.

And then I killed him. I know. It disgusts me too. And after I killed him, I wept for what I had done - to him, to his family and to the girl who loved him more than life itself. And then I stopped writing. And that is why my book remains buried in my computer. I have denied myself the very thing I desire the most – the opportunity to write about the characters that I love, the characters that have become so real to me. Now I only write about myself. Arrogant really. And self-absorbed. I'm despicable, I know, but it saves the lives of countless others for whom I may take it upon myself to slaughter on a whim. Somewhere in my egocentricity lies an intentional altruism.

So here I am at my computer, observed by my killer - a man for whom I have the utmost sympathy, a man who has become corporeal and has actions which are now interdependent with my own imagination. He waits just outside my window ... watching. I feel what he feels and I weep again as I write for the son that we both loved. I have driven him to this – to the point of becoming a killer like me. He is a good man, a man of integrity who has learned from the difficulties of his life – the death of his wife, the accident which confined him to a wheelchair and the illness of his only son. He has an understanding of heartache and an empathy for those who suffer that I could only hope to emulate. I should know; I gave it to him. I hurt as much as he hurts over the death of Jacob. I felt and then wrote his pain and anguish. I created his son. I gave him life. And then I gave him death. It's no wonder he hates me. I hate myself for what I've done.

To Billy Black, the man outside my window, I type, "I killed your son and have caused you months of grief and sorrow. I am sorry. Please forgive me. I loved him too." I abused the very power that I gave myself, the power of words. And now I will abuse it again, being the despicable kind of monster that I am. I hereby use my power selfishly, to save my own life, to stop my assassination as I write the following:

_

* * *

Billy Black watched the killer through the window. She sat at her computer alone, unguarded, typing slowly and steadily. Her shoulder length dark brown hair, streaked with red and gold was pulled away from her face which reflected back an eerie bluish light from the monitor. Her face, lit as it was, appeared unexpectedly soft and sad as he stared intently from his vantage point at the window. Billy analyzed that face, every distinct feature. She didn't look like the killer that she was - the heartless woman who had ruthlessly inflicted terminal cancer on his son, a man that she loved - a man who was utterly without guile, a man too good for the world in which she placed him. _

_She looked harmless, vulnerable - someone's sister, daughter. She was a mother herself, capable of understanding the depth of pain that would be endured with the loss of a child. How could she do it? Here she was, writing late at night after her children were in bed. She was pathetic. Was she plotting the death of another precious soul as he watched? Such a one as she had no business playing God, choosing who would live and who would die. He would stop her from ever killing again._

_Billy raised the rifle to the rest in on the window ledge and watched as she typed. He waited for just the right moment. She paused in her typing to gaze straight ahead at the screen, her face full of pain, and her fingers hovering over the keyboard in uncertainty. Then she looked up to heaven as if in prayer; praying for her wretched soul, no doubt. _

_Too late for prayer, he thought._

_He was going to send her straight to hell where she belonged. He placed the barrel of the gun against the pane of the window and aimed it right at her head, just a few feet from the window where he perched._

_She looked intently at the ceiling and tears filled her eyes. They rolled down her cheeks and she brushed them away with the heel of her hand as she dropped her face to her palms and sobbed in earnest. _

"_Jacob," he heard her moan in grief. _

_Her shoulders jerked and she broke down in distress, weeping quietly and uncontrollably._

_Billy abruptly released the gun in horror. It hit the ledge and bounced to the ground where it lay in the dirt. He dropped his dark head to his hands as he wiped the tears from his own eyes. _

_She had loved him too. The writer had loved Jacob just as much as he had loved his own son. He would not kill her today. And he would not kill her tomorrow. He would let her live with her guilt. She would not write again and that was punishment enough for killing one as beautiful as Jacob Black._

**

* * *

A/N: **I wrote this one day when I was feeling a little guilty about killing off Jacob Black in one of my stories. Needless to say, the plot of the story was changed and Jacob lives on forever in my writing. Who says werewolves aren't immortal?


End file.
